Things I Don’t Write About

I don’t write about the excelcius moments that arise from divine proximity – except when I do.

I don’t write about the grinding sensation of failure, of inadequacy, of intrinsic inability.

I don’t write about the stress, anxiety, confusion, or despair.

I don’t write about the messages I hear.

I don’t write about the People I meet.

I don’t write about the calling or the response.

I don’t write about the currents, winds, streams, or rivers.

I don’t write about the whispers.

I don’t write about the job.

I don’t write about the joy.

**

I’ve become a reasonably successful recluse. I’m not known for these things because I don’t talk about them. I don’t talk about them because they are a greater piece of my heart than I thought anything could be. I don’t talk about them because despite having been given a hard reboot and a new OS, despite having eyes that are a different color than I was born with, despite having to relearn the finer points of embodiment, despite having the physical, lived experience of divine intervention I don’t always believe in the reality of the context I’m caught up in.

I don’t talk about these things because I don’t want to.

I don’t talk about these things because I owe no one an accounting (least ways no one that has to read a blog in order to gain an accounting). I have always served the Powers first – before there was even an awareness that serving the Powers constituted spirit work, I served them and knew what I was. Even when people who should have known better tried to tell me what, exactly, I was and wasn’t.

Did you know there was a time when devotion and spirit work were all but mutually exclusive? It’s true. I argued the point more than once. Love, I was told, wasn’t compatible with service. Love, I argued, was the very fuel of service.

**

I don’t talk about spirit work because I don’t want to talk about failure. I’ve frequently reflected that I’m on the path of failure. I will never not fail. Failure is the condition of the manifest world. Failure is the trajectory of disintegration, the path that absolutely all of us are on. We will fail because this is not a path that will ever reach completion. We will always be inadequate to the task. It’s therefore cruel to pick at the practice of someone else, inexcusably mean to criticize the work another is engaged in. We can and should encourage improvement, can and should demand accountability, can and should require redress and apology – but the work that happens within the sphere of one’s own interaction with the numinous and the expression thereof insofar as it doesn’t interfere with another being’s intrinsic and sacred sovereignty – including their teleology – doesn’t require commentary. We must be free to fail – else the path itself remains only a potential.

**

I don’t talk about my spirit work because I don’t want to talk about my failure. In defiance of everything I’ve learned about this path and everything the path has taught me, I got fired. Yes. That….that doesn’t really happen. It’s not supposed to. There are a very limited number of outcomes on a spirit work path, especially one that takes you further towards very specific ends. Getting fired is not one of those outcomes. But I am a Lokean and I will always be an exception.

**

I don’t talk about spirit work because I don’t want to talk about how much I want to go back to work. I don’t want to describe the very many tastes I’ve sampled of this life in an effort to find something that satisfied in quite the same way. I found nothing. When the Work itself has put you back in this world, your software is fundamentally incompatible with other functions. It’s like trying to make a spreadsheet in Photoshop. No one’s happy.

**

So why am I talking about all this if I don’t actually want to? I’m talking about it because I might, just might, be going back to work.

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6 thoughts on “Things I Don’t Write About”

Lovely post. I don’t want to quibble with you since you seem to be in a restful place but are you familiar with process philosophy? I encountered it thru Carol Christ and then was led to Alfred North Whitehead for a different angle on the subject. You talk about failure rather than death which it seems your utilizing as synonyms for one another by comparing failure to the human condition; i.e., entropy would be another way to describe it.

Reblogged this on Strip Me Back To The Bone and commented:
You should do yourself a favor and go read this. My favorite quote? “We will always be inadequate to the task. It’s therefore cruel to pick at the practice of someone else, inexcusably mean to criticize the work another is engaged in.”

Yes, I’m a fan firmly in Camp Silence, but even if I wasn’t, this is just a beautiful, heart-moving piece.